A post card of Roosevelt High School, which will be celebrating its 100th Anniversay in 2025
By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Historian; recipient of the 2004 Key to History; President Emerita Yonkers Historical Society; Member of the Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board; Chair of Revolutionary Yonkers 250; and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
September 16, 1942: Dr. Lawrence Ashley, Chief of Yonkers Public Schools Vocational Education, announced student selection for Roosevelt’s Preflight Training program. At the start of registration, more than twenty students applied. Open to Junior and Seniors in all high schools, students had to be eighteen years old on graduation. Training was after school, three hours five days a week. The original course student limit was 25 trainees; however, since more than 400 Roosevelt students attended the program’s informational meeting, it was expanded.
Dr. Ashley investigated students receiving college credits for this preflight training, and reported he had an unofficial yet positive response from college officials; New York City’s Air Training Corps indicated it would give full college entrance credit.
Tuesday, September 17th
September 17, 1891: Dedication of the Yonkers Civil War Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in front of Philipse Manor Hall, honored Yonkers men who fought to save the Union in the Civil War.
September 17, 1942: The Army Quartermaster Depot announced Alexander Smith and Sons Carpet Company was awarded a contract for 155,000 wool blankets! Smith VP Maitland Griggs announced this agreement would keep the blanket-making department running full time into the next year.
Wednesday, September 18th
September 18, 1940: City Manager Raymond Whitney, acting Public Safety Commissioner, told YPD Officers they must pay debts or face charges. After Whitney checked on garnishees, he instructed Chief Edward Quirk to remind the men of the debt rule, requiring officers to pay “just debts.”
September 18, 1943: Dr. Lawrence Ashley, Director of the Yonkers War Production Training Program at the Yonkers School of Aeronautical Manufacturing, sent 87 trained workers to Eastern Aircraft to work as aircraft riveters; an additional 114 workers had been sent earlier in the week. These new employees completed the specialized course in airplane riveting created by agreement between Eastern Aircraft and the United States Employment Service.
Only 200 trainees were left in the Aeronautical Training program.
Thursday, September 19th
September 19, 1960: Three hundred Otis employees were laid off because the company’s contract with Brunswick Bowling ended; Brunswick decided to manufacture its own machines. Otis had manufactured bowling alley automatic pinsetters since Brunswick introduced the innovation four years earlier.
This didn’t affect Otis’ contract with the Bowl-Mor Company to manufacture, install and service tenpin machines. Bowling equipment was manufactured in a former Smith building Otis leased.
September 19, 1963: After spending $1.5 million making improvements, Refined Syrups and Sugars announced an additional investment of $5.5 million to expand their Yonkers facilities. Refined Syrups bought 8.5 acres south of their refinery to increase storage areas, modernize production facilities, renovate roads and improve company parking lots.
Friday, September 20th
September 20, 1853: Elisha Otis opened a small factory on the banks of the Hudson River to manufacture elevators equipped with his automatic safety equipment.
September 20, 1939: Sara McPike, a Yonkers proponent for women’s suffrage, President of the St. Catherine Welfare Association and a member of the Women Investors in America (WIA), asked Yonkers women to support WIA’s efforts to keep America out of war. According to McPike, “The women of America must understand they cannot save their husbands, sons and brothers from being blown to bits on European battlefields if they do not prevent America from taking part in a war that would undoubtedly destroy our American form of government.”
Saturday, September 21st
September 21, 1925: Plans were announced to transform the Riverdale Avenue frontage of the former Waring Hat Manufacturing Company’s plant into 21 stores; well-known local architect H. Lansing Quick was designing improvements to the entire Riverdale Avenue building frontage. The large Waring Sizing Building on St. Mary’s Street was slated to be converted into a garage.
The Waring Hat Factory property was bought by a syndicate of locally prominent businessmen… whose names were not revealed in the announcement.
September 21, 1945: The Ragone family of Morsemere Avenue held on to their hopes their son and brother Vincent, reported dead by the War Department July 1944, was alive. A brother reported he had received a letter from Vincent written two months later, September 1944. An unidentified solder visited Yonkers to meet Vincent’s parents but missed them; they were at work. Instead, he told neighbor Anthony Ziccinelli he was looking for the family to tell them Vincent still was alive, taken prisoner by the Germans… and was skin and bones.
Sunday, September 22nd
September 22, 1933: The first society kidnapping in Yonkers was thwarted with the arrest of nurse Caroline DePalma and gas station attendant James Medley.
After six weeks receiving terrifying threats, the wedding of Yonkers debutante Helen Batcheller and John Dougherty took place under very different circumstances than originally planned. Instead of a fashionable church wedding, it was a quiet wedding at the Leffingwell-Batcheller mansion, 250 Palisade Avenue. Agents from the Department of Justice acted as witnesses to the wedding, while Yonkers Police detectives guarded the home.
Helen’s uncle, Russell Leffingwell, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for President Wilson.
September 22, 1938: Denise O’Brien, Park Hill Show Business attorney Denis O’Brien’s daughter, phoned her dad to let him know she had survived. Their summer home in Westerly, Rhode Island, was hit by a terrible storm and tidal wave that smashed the east coast. Unfortunately, her brother Robert and his wife, Pawtucket RI residents, were among the missing.
Sixteen-year-old Yonkers’ tennis star Audrey Lucas was killed in the same storm; a Massachusetts school chimney crashed through her school dining hall and crushed her.
Questions or comments on this column? Email YonkersHistory1646@gmail.com.
For information on the Yonkers Historical Society, Sherwood House and upcoming events, please visit our website www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, call 914-961-8940 or email info@yonkershistoricalsociety.org
